The big question businesses have about social media these days is, "how can I measure ROI?" With straight advertising in social networks, that becomes pretty clear, and Offerpal has launched a new display ad network for social media. If you’re unfamiliar with Offerpal, it’s a platform that lets advertise and developers monetize social media apps.

McAfee and Adgregate have partnered on what they’re calling the industry’s first secure advertising. WebProNews spoke with Brent Remai, VP of Consumer Marketing at McAfee about what this means for advertising.

This could be the year of the display ad. That’s not to say that display ads aren’t prevalent every year, but Google has only been involved with that for a little while, and if analysts’ projections are accurate, this will be the year that Google’s display ad business tops $1 billion in sales.

Google has launched a new tool in the US and the UK to measure the impact of display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network. It’s called Campaign Insights.

Google says the tool can give reliable data about how a campaign has raised brand awareness or active user interest, in a particular product or service. It calculates the incremental lift in both online search activity and website visits resulting from a display ad campaign.

eZanga is a company that prides itself on providing online advertisers with local, regional, and national advertising with high ROI. The company has now launched display advertising with search.

CEO Rich Kahn tells WebProNews about the significance of this, and talks about why things are looking bright for online advertising, and specifically display advertising.

Yahoo and AT&T announced a partnership, where AT&T will sell Yahoo! display ad inventory to local businesses in the US. They will begin doing so later this summer.

"Local businesses are looking to drive in-store traffic, and our alliance with AT&T Interactive will help them reach a local audience of highly-engaged potential customers on Yahoo!," said Jim Schinella, Senior Vice President, North America Region, Yahoo!.

Yahoo has launched a new self-serve display advertising solution called Yahoo My Display Ads. The company says the solution is designed to help small and medium-sized businesses easily reach their target audience via Yahoo and its network of partner sites.

Last October Google launched its Display Ad Builder. WebProNews has covered various features of this product since its launch.

"In short, DAB brings some key attributes of search — simplicity and cost-efficiency –  to display, a form of advertising that many agencies find to be more resource intensive and complex," a spokesperson for Google tells WebProNews. "Since the fall, it’s become much more relevant to the industry as the economy has made executing campaigns efficiently more crucial."